Gabe (In the Company of Snipers, #8)(87)
“Yes.” She lowered her head as the story spilled out. “Rudy was only two years old when I gave him an adult inhalant. He stopped breathing and—” She unfastened her seatbelt and withdrew closer to the window. “The pharmacy labeled the wrong can of inhalant with a child’s dosage, but I should’ve known better. I should’ve double-checked everything. Rudy almost died because of me.”
Gabe studied the hard line of her shoulders, the tight cords in her neck. She carried a lot of guilt for a woman of her small stature, and she wouldn’t look him in the eye anymore. He turned her around and pulled her stiff back into his chest. Clutching her shoulders, he began a firm massage with the pads of his thumbs along her upper spine.
She responded to his touch, ducking her head into her neck and rolling her shoulders. This woman liked a neck rub, and it was no wonder. Headache bones. That was what his chiropractor called the neck vertebrae where the shoulder muscles got hooked up nice and tight when a person felt stressed or guilty.
“You can’t change what happened yesterday.” Even through the hoody, he could feel the tremendous stress she carried. “Relax. I’m here to help. We’ll get through this together.”
A knot let go. Snap. Pop. She cocked her head to the left, then the right. But when she lowered her chin to her chest and moaned, a different kind of therapy for her—and him—came to mind.
“I have to keep anything bad from happening to Kelsey. It’s my job.”
“No, Shelby. You can’t, and it’s not.” He let his thumbs dig deeper into the tension above her shoulder blades. “Do you think you’re responsible to save the whole world? It’s an impossible task. I’m here to tell you. Let it go.”
She crumbled, sniffing back her emotions, her face in her hands. “I could’ve killed him. It was all my fault.”
“Maybe it was. I don’t know. I wasn’t there, but are you going to let it define you for the rest of your life? Hell, Shelby. Don’t cripple yourself before you even get started. In the Corps, we get told a thousand times a day to keep on keeping on no matter what. You need to do the same thing. Prove to yourself and the world that you can rise above that one, damned accident. Get that nursing degree you want so bad. Don’t ever quit.”
She scrunched her shoulders under his hands. “You know I’m not a real nurse?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I do, but I think I know why you passed yourself off as one. It sounds a little more impressive than nursing assistant, huh?”
“But it was still a lie.”
“Ah, not exactly. A wish, maybe. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? To be a nurse?”
She nodded. “I thought you guys would respect me more. The minute I saw you guys, I knew I had to do something to keep control. Not very smart, huh?”
“It’s a symptom, Shelby. A symptom that you want to make something better of your life. That’s all.” He opted for sharing time. USMC or not, it was time she knew. “My inner control freak showed up early morning in Helmand Valley. We’d dropped in, quiet as death. Just after one guy. Should’ve been quick and easy. Wasn’t.” He paused, the door to that far off valley reopened and the sights and smells of another world filling the cab.
Shelby twisted under his hands, but he wouldn’t let her turn around. Not yet. He kept massaging, working his fingers and thumbs into her muscles while the story unfolded.
“I honest to God didn’t think that little kid knew how to fire it. The grenade launcher had to weigh twenty-five, maybe thirty pounds loaded like it was.” Gabe closed his eyes and wished the tiny ghost away. “Kids over there are so small. He looked like any other, who would’ve really rather had a piece of candy in his hands, maybe an extra MRE. We always carried extras. Not my idea of a killer. Maybe ten years old. Maybe not. But the way he smiled...”
Shelby leaned into him, so Gabe relented, pulling her back to his chest, his arms around her neck and shoulders so he could bury his nose in her hair. Green apple shampoo smelled so much better than what his mind had kicked up. The blood. The sweat. The damned smell of the real fear that he’d die in that stink hole of an excuse for a village. The phantom pain of a foot too blasted to hell to be surgically reattached.
The flutter under his ribs kicked up. He inhaled deeply, not sure she’d want to stay with him when he finished, but sure as hell going to give it a shot. It was time they both came clean. If she left, well, she wouldn’t be the first. Plenty other women had taken off running.
“Little guy just stood there looking at me. I kept hoping. He kept smiling. Funny thing is I knew he’d do it. Had a sick feeling. Just didn’t want to believe that I’d gone halfway around the world to kill a kid. Me. A big Marine all armor plated and geared up to fight men. Not babies.”
Gabe closed his eyes, fighting to swallow. To this day, he didn’t know which hurt worse—killing that smiling boy or losing Darrell in the same fight. Both seemed so damned unfair. Losing his foot paled in comparison. It honest to God did.
“A bullet goes faster than an RPG. Twelve hundred meters per second beats two hundred ninety-four meters a second any day. Damned truth is that it came down to him or me. Not sure who fired first. It’s all one steaming pile of f—” He bit the ugly word back. Fuck. It still hurts.
A gentle, warm hand lifted to the side of his face. He closed his eyes, not deserving her kindness, wanting to forget. Once and forever.